Think Life and Live Longer

When I wake up in the early morning hours after a sound sleep, I feel so good because I’m still alive. Hey! What a relief! When you think about it, life is wonderful, and everyone should count their many blessings to see what God had done.

Whether you have a chronic illness or even a so-called terminal illness, your body will respond if your mind is fixed on healing and living. I believe people are dying prematurely because they think they are going to die. Much of this negative thinking originates from doctors, health care workers and even family members.

It is amazing that during four years of medical school, a medical student is never taught how to transfer the feeling of survival to a patient who may have a terminal illness. In fact, it was nutritionist and writer Adelle Davis who wrote, “Thousands upon thousands of persons have studied disease. Almost no one has studied health.”

I am convinced, and have instructed family members as well as patients to think “life” and take charge when adversities arise. It was Alexander the Great who stated, “I am dying with the help of too many physicians.”

I also believe that several good laughs a day will help keep the doctor away. In India, there are actual laughing clubs that people can attend before going to work. The writer Norman Cousins stated, “Laughter is a form of internal jogging. It moves your internal organs around. It enhances respiration. It is an igniter of great expectations.”

When attending to my patients in their home, I always instructed them that upon awakening, they should say, “Good morning sun,” even if the sun ain’t shining. I would also instruct them to simply meditate for about 10 minutes and experience the life energy in their bodies and minds.

It was humorist Robert Orben who stated, “Quit worrying about your health. It’ll go away.” While that statement is funny, I don’t think it’s quite true. I certainly believe that one should be concerned about his or her health and work on it by maintaining healthy lifestyles, good nutrition, exercise and yearly checkups. According to Henri Amiel, the Swiss poet, “There is no curing a sick man who believes himself in health.” I certainly believe what the writer DeForest Clinton Jarvis wrote, “It is a lot harder to keep people well than it is to ... get them over a sickness.”

To my faithful readers, I close with the statement of the great Greek biographer Plutarch: “A man ought to handle his body like the sail of a ship and neither lower and reduce it much when no cloud is in sight, nor be slack and careless in managing it when he comes to suspect something is wrong.”